Management by Baseball

What do Hall of Fame baseball managers like Connie Mack & John McGraw have in common with today's business leaders? Why are baseball managers better role models for management than corporate heroes like Jack Welch, Jamie Dimon & Bill Gates? And just what does Peter Drucker have to do with Oriole ex-manager Earl Weaver?
Management consultant & ex-baseball reporter Jeff Angus shows you almost everything you need to know about management you can learn from Baseball.

Saturday, January 31, 2004

Closing a Career: TheCosmic Wisdom of John Smoltz

That last
entry about Willie Mays attracted a lot of interesting posts
at Baseball
Primer, as well as some insightful e-mail, many of which
asked the question, "So when do you retire yourself or
push the decison on someone else who seems to be overstaying his
contributions?"

I encourage you to take the path of John
Smoltz, who is neither going gentle in that good night nor
hanging on as a merely a fan favorite with nothing to offer.

After eleven consecutive years as a net-positive starting
pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, he suffered an injury that
limited the number of innings he could throw. The Braves'
management caluclated a way to use what innings Smoltz could
pitch in a way they considered his appearances would be highly
leveraged: They made him their closer.

In the last three seasons he's been the Braves' primary closer
& he's been as successful as before (if not a little moreso),
in this late career shift:

It's
fascinating that an individual can make this transition and be
just as good. The mental aptitude set you need to be
consistently-good starter is very different from those required
to be a successful high-pressure relief pitcher. The chess-game
aspect of the game is different, the mental and emotional cues
you need to use as a starter or reliver are nearly opposites.
Yes, the physical game is similar (not identical), and many of
the strategic overlays and fundamentals are the same, but they
really are quite different.

BEYOND BASEBALL

Don't
undermestimate the emotional shift required, too. As with many
American people outside baseball, one's job becomes one's key
identity for interacting with the the world (as in the
near-universal-stranger-at-a-party opener, So what do you
do?). Giving up that identity (and if you do it really well
and people recognize you do it really well, that bit of orgone,
too) is a monster challenge, tougher than getting Strom Thurmond
in any of his last 24 years in the Senate to recognize what the
topic being discussed was.

I
think the trick of knowing when to change positions or retire is
this: (A) Have some perspective on your life that
extends beyond the tunnel-vision world of work, and (B) Have a
vision that's concrete and not based on numbers outside
your control, and (C) Make sure those measures don't involve what
other people think of you or what you should accomplish, but
match your own view of yourself.

Given Smoltz's psyche,
which is dominated by a spiritual desire to be the best that
he can be as a way to inspire others, he has more important
things to worry about in baseball. Such as doing whatever it
takes to help the Braves win a second world championship
after flopping for much of their 12-year playoff run.

This is the stuff of great
competitors. Great competitors prosper no matter what, and
despite Smoltz spending most of his career battling injuries
and hitters, he still manages to prosper. Great competitors
also can tell you how they often dreamed as a youth of
starring in the seventh game of the World Series along the
way to sprinting into Cooperstown.

"My dreams strictly
involved the seventh game of the World Series, and I never
even thought about the Hall of Fame," said Smoltz, 37,
recalling his days as a prolific athlete in his native
Lansing, Mich. "In my back yard, all I did was pitch
hundreds of games of the seventh game of the World Series. I
made sure that I lost one of them, just to make sure that I
would get some kind of reality." [snip]

A couple of questions,
though: How long can Smoltz continue to ignore his aches and
pains? He says he's healthy now after his elbow problems near
the end of last season, but what about next season, and those
after that? "I will retire before I even think about
playing an extra year or two that might get me over the [Hall
of Fame] hump," Smoltz said. "I will not hang on. I
will not pitch beyond my year of competitiveness or even
competence, just to get into the Hall of Fame. That's just
the truth."

In
your organization, how many managers and executives have their
eye on some external recognition or mark of success (the Ferrari
Testarossa, the trophy spouse, the dollar bonus or wealth
accumulation target)? Too many, I'll guess.

For
Smoltz, it's not the Hall of Fame (out of his control, external
recognition). It's "being the best he can be" and
pitching as long as he can be competitive. Thos are guildelines
you can use yourself, and if you are struggling with someone in a
key position who won't change jobs or retire, you can apply these
guielines by trying to get that person to outline their goals and
examine them to see if they're healthy.

I've
had some success using guidelines close to these Smoltz ones to
talk a frozen person though their thinking. And in some cases,
people can awaken enough to overcome their fear of change. I
said, "some". People, especially Americans, have a hard
time differentiating their real identity and self from the way
others see them (and the way they see themselves) through their
work.

I
won't guarantee you the Cosmic Wisdom of John Smoltz will save
someone swirling the bowl too long, but it's the best construct I
know for waking up the person plaquing up an organizationw ith
their suspended animation.

1/31/2004 02:43:00 PM posted by j @ 1/31/2004 02:43:00 PM

Friday, January 30, 2004

An Accepted Delusion About Willie Mays

One of the classic saws in baseball is about Willie
Mays, he of one of the top ten careers of all time,
"just played too long". Some people feel like he
sullied his career by lingering too long and building up a silt
of mediocrity over his great accomplishments. That feeling is
just a flat-out illusion.

But it's an illusion with lots of staying power. If you doubt
it, or you never heard this saw, go to a search engine, say
Dogpile or Google, and enter the search terms "Willie
Mays" "too long" (don't forget the quote marks).
Not all the articles will claim Mays played too long, but you'll
see lots. The truth has been forgotten under the story.

Mays' career trajectory was in parallel with others who lasted
into their late 30s, except he started at such a high level that
even deep in his tail off, he still contributed a lot more than
most players. Here's the tail end of his career. The key
offensive number is at the end of the row: OPS+, that is, his
overall offensive contribution as a ratio of the league average
player's.

In 1972 at age 41, Mays was still producing an
OPS+ of 131, that is, 131% (31% more) than an average batter's
offensive production.

His single sub-standard year was at age 42,
when he was a back-up for the 1973 Mets. And his bat, at 81% of
average, was certainly sub-standard, but it was fewer than half a
season's appearances. How many ballplayers, or people you've
worked with in your own organization, stayed in a job for years
and years after they had no contribution to make any more. Mays
simply took a role as a sub for a final tour, and made some small
contributions while not clogging up his team's accomplishments.
The 1973 Mets got to, and then lost in the last game of, the
World Series.

Those aren't great numbers he had, but they
aren't out of line for fifth outfielders, and for teams that like
a defensive gem rather than an offensive contributor on the
bench, he might not even be out of line for a fourth OF. The big
negative is that manager Yogi Berra chose to use him for 239
plate appearances when his offensive capabilities probably
merited no more than 150, but that's having perfect 20-20
hindsight that no-one except Strat-O-Matic and APBA card set
buyers get in distributing game time. The appearances he got cost
Don Hahn (OPS+=62)and Jim Beauchamp (extra credit if
you know how to pronounce his last name)(OPS+=89) some extra
work, and it wasn't exactly a block to their careers.

And Mays wasn't even roster plaque that year.
He still made defensive contributions. Here's his stat line for
that final season.

lgFP .= League Average Fielding Percentage
RnF.. = Range Factor
lgRnF = League Average Range Factor at that position

At age 42, his range factor (how many balls did
he get to per 9 innings) was 2.33 versus the league average 1.96
(about 18% better than the average center-fielder, a top
10-percentile effort). We can choose to dismiss that his fielding
average was markedly higher than the league average's (991 to
977) because official scorers can control for that, and esteemed
heroes like Mays can get a break in that category. He filled in
at first base for 17 games and acquitted himself at a position
not his own (he wasn't great, but he was well within the range of
a sub).

Moreover, in 1973, Mays' team The New York Mets, went to the
World Series, and in the playoffs and the Series, Mays hit
3-for-10 (all three just singles) with a couple of RBI. Not star
quality, but not very costly. In his sole game appearance in the
playoffs, with the series knotted at 2-2, Mays pinch hit and
knocked in what proved to be the winning run that won the
pennant..

The worst you can say about Mays' end-game
is...pretty much nothing. He left the way most of us would want
to; a long very successful career ending with an easy year of
special projects in which he contributed to a winning team.

BEYOND BASEBALL

Beyond baseball, there are a lot of fine
managers (and execs and line staff) who overstay their welcome,
who don't have the good sense Willie Mays had. Succession
planning is a nightmare, even for competent H.R. departments,
especially if the one who doesn't know it's time retire is the
head man (think Jack Welch, who plaqued-up his company's
succession way beyond the time he had anything new to add and
whose simplistic strategy was wonderfully effective at maximizing
corporate returns, but like any corporate management strategy,
has a point of failure when the shift to the next thing comes too
late).

So what do you do about it? Think Willie Mays.
Find a spot where the skilled but needs a change or to retire
manager can contribute some given his or her current talents, a
position that makes some difference and where a good effort will
add value. If you can't find that in a big organization, you're
not looking hard enough. Every team needs a fourth and fifth
outfielder.

And what if the person is not at retirement age
and has successes in the past, but has been lingering in the same
position in a vortex of mediocrity for too long?

Then it's time to assess the aptitudes and
skills they have and find them a new position whether they're
going to cooperate or not. A new position can awaken the latent
talent within. Sometimes that won't work. Sometimes the person is
depressed (and sometimes that's for reasons outside of work). If
the person has been or can be a contributor, you owe the effort
to try to help. In big organizations, HR departments frequently
have Employee Assistance Programs to provide for people with life
problems, though my experirence with people in depressions for a
long time is that part of the condition is to deny they have a
problem.

I've worked with a depressed marketing manager
who insisted on denying and trying to ride it out while taking
down her entire department forever (she was fired, department
outsourced). I consulted at a shop where the depressed person was
a key contributor (not a manager) and she chose to get some help,
and once she got some equilibrium, had the perspective to realize
the job was making her nuts, and she changed positions within the
agency, becaoming a key contributor again.

Willie Mays stayed just the right amount of
time. With a little observation and management, you can make sure
most people do.

1/30/2004 06:42:00 AM posted by j @ 1/30/2004 06:42:00 AM

Monday, January 26, 2004

M. Donald Grant's Met Fever:When the Bottom Line Is Not Winning

We idealize the closed, competitive system of baseball and
many of us see in it a pure laboratory for testing competing
theories for winning. Since the beginning of the game, though,
winning has not always been the primary focus of team owners.
Sometimes it's been the (financial) bottom line.

Winning just isn't the only prime motivator. Before anyone
figured out that having an owner operate two teams was a loser
idea (he could load one up with two teams' worth of talent, let
the other implode like a remanufactured whoopie-cushion under a
sumo wrestler, making more money than he could with two middling
teams), 19th century baseball allowed this practice. In the
1950s, the New York Yankees used the Kansas City Athletics as a
farm club. At the time it all looked very suspicious, with very
good players going from the As to the Yanks and roster plaque
going the other way generally. Later documentation indicated the
Athletics owner had been patially financed by the Yankees' money,
making them, functionally, a part owner that had Kansas City's
losing represent a small advantage.

In the 70s, when the Mets board member M. Donald Grant,
basically an accountant with some job experience as a
stockbroker, took the lead in managing the club's business
afffairs, he calculated the incremental value (to the financial
bottom line) of wins over about 70 were worth far less than the
wins under that number, so he made decisions that would slash
expenses and while resulting in more losses on the field,
wouldn't affect income to the magnitude of the savings. He even
traded the team's marquee player, Tom Seaver, still in excellent
form, to the Reds in 1977 for a souvenir ashtray, two pieces of
string cheese and a prayer to be said later, just to keep payroll
costs down. Grant was fired the next season.

Closer to the present, we have teams that don't have winning
as job #1.

The Milwaukee
Brewers appear to have taken a step a year ago towards aiming
at winning, but for the ten of the last eleven seasons, they've
had losing records (in 1996, they were essentially a .500 club),
and they've kept their payroll very low, which, while it isn't a
deal-breaker, is a partial factor in success. But they've made
money during that time anyway, though several other means. For
one thing, they have a new stadium for which they didn't pay the
tab. For another, they are the recipient of Major League revenue
sharing money, skimming bucks off more profitable teams to
subsidize their efforts. The Brewer startegy has been very
bottom-line, not about excellence. in anything but clever
accounting.

The Detroit
Tigers have had ten losing records in a row, the last four
declining each season. Last year they lost 119 games, and it had
never been their intent to win a 2003 pennant. They did,
however, have a different excuse. They were rolling out a lot of
very raw players to give them high-level experience, and young
players keep the payroll low because their negotiation options
are very limited. The Tigers were more investing in the future
than they were just playing bookkeeper tricks.

If you believe the newspaper reports in their home region, the
Seattle
Mariners' ownership were just straight out viewing their
bottom line as earnings and not as winning. Howard Lincoln, the
man who represents the interests of the largest shareholder, has
gone on the record saying that winning the division is not
significantly better than winning the wild card, and that winning
in any one year is not as importnat as just putting a competitive
product on the field every year. Insiders I know who are friends
with several of the smaller shareholders tell me the owners are
primarily (not exclusively) focused on the financial bottom line,
showing a profit. Your odds of showing a profit in a fiscal
quarter or annum or season are higher if you make that your
focus.

As an observer, I'm not critical of that approach, but the
odds of winning when your measure is the bottom line when you're
competing with others who are pursuing excellence are very low.
The Mariners haven't made the kind of popular late-July
team-boosting acquisitions that rivals have. The last two years,
they have flagged as the flag was in sight. And ownership is fine
with that, to the degree it hasn't yet affected the financial
bottom line.

And most (not all) of the players who are the kind of players
who can help you win are the kind want to play for a winner if
they can.

BEYOND BASEBALL

Beyond baseball, the measure of success as financial bottom
line is just as sure to corrode excellence unless that financial
measure is simply a metric and not a goal. I generally won't take
clients whose mission statement is "Increase Shareholder
Value" or "Maximize Net". Not because those are
not valid or hateful or stupid. It's just that that approach
guarantees mediocre product. Because M. Donald Grant was right in
his own demented Bookkeeper From Hell way: It is more
expensive to outlay for excellence than for mediocrity.

Cost-cutting and tight resource management as a means is
necessary part of any success. Endemic cost-cutting as a primary
goal in business and government creates laboratories for the
invention of long-term mediocrity. All human systems tend to be
self-amplifying. The pursuit of mediocrity in output tends to
push out those who care deeply about excellence and tend to
attract those who have comfort with less-than excellence, so over
time, this selects for the talent that is comfortable with the
strategy, making it ever less likely (without a big purge) that
the mediocrity can be overcome.

There are plenty of organizations that thrive while selling
mediocrity, usually to other organizations that themselves are
similarly focused. A kula ring of crap. Maybe a fifth of the
Fortune 500 are in this zone.

Have you ever worked in an organization that had it's primary
mission to maximize shareholder value or earnings? Did it work as
a long-term strategy or did the management blow itself out? How
long did it take before they failed? How long did it take for
them to be held accountable?

1/26/2004 01:04:00 PM posted by j @ 1/26/2004 01:04:00 PM

Sunday, January 25, 2004

Hidden in Plain Sight: When ManagersCan't Process Two Things at Once

SUMMARY OF LAST ENTRY

Back in in late October, a couple of
high-level Cuban ballplayers defected, 24-year old Sancti
Spíritus starter Maels Rodriguez and 31-year old second
baseman Yobal Dueñas, with the intent of playing in the
majors. Because the system has some built-in edges for teams
that sign Cuban defectors, front offices have been eyeing the
merchandise.

But in a wierd way that's an lesson in
limited thinking that's illustrative for decisionmakers
beyond baseball.

Why total interest in Rodriguez, none of
note in Dueñas?

The previous entry talked about their specific attributes, and
it's clear Rodriguez is the more attractive of the two. But
Dueñas has had years of consistent, all-star caliber success and
is a rare commodity, a power-hitting middle infielder with good
wheels.

BEYOND BASEBALL

I'm pretty sure this asymmetry of interest is resulting from
something we see in business and government all the time: the
unwillingness (or inability) to process two things at once.

In big organizations, most managers are more afraid of making
a mistake than they are of missing an opportunity.

Angus' First Law of Organizational Behavior:
"Almost all human systems are self-amplifying".
Meaning that in an organization where fear-based decisions are
more prevalent than opportunity-based ones are, fear-based
decisionmakers are more likely to get promotions, and since more
people tend to hire people like themselves, more fear-based
decisionamkers get hired than opportunity-based ones. And more
fear-based managers are likely to get promoted, an
intensification cycle, and one of the key reasons big businesses
and big charities and big government agencies all tend towards
inefficiency in the same way.

One of the most common co-factors in fear-based decisionmaking
is the elimination of options. These kinds of managers only want
to look at one, most-likely, option, and then grind themselves
into a tizzy worrying about it. Adding X options, in the
cognitive map of most fear-based decisionmakers just multiplies
the anxiety X-fold.

I was helping a dot-com company choose an ad agency a couple
of years back. He had four scheduled to come in. The head-man, a
primo example of fear-based frenzy, was terrible about the
process and the decision. His company had very marginal finances...not smoke
and mirrors, but not very well capitalised. He needed something
outrageous to give the company a very noticeable image that was,
at the same time, true to his (truly fine) vision. But he
agonized over the inclusion of every candidate. He wanted a specific type of agency: an
internationally-known mainstream ad agency that had been around
since at least 1930. But those kind were expensive, not interested in
his tiny business, and too straight-ahead (or in a couple of
cases, downright stodgy) to do him any good given his goals. I
burned up a couple of favors and got a couple big old agencies into the process.

The first presentation was pretty good.

Fear-Frenzy Man insisted we stop right there and give them the
account. No comparisons, no bidding, no digesting of what they'd
said. No negotiation. An archetypal event in the life of the fear-based manager.

[There are, of course, managers at the other extreme: those
who see only the options and either use it as an excuse to
exercise none of them or to hump the leg of each opportunity like
a household poodle on puppy uppers. These are just as
problematic, but tend not to inhabit for long the fear-based
organization's management cadre.]

I believe front offices aren't interested in what Dueñas has
to offer, at almost any price, simply because they are
interested in the services (not competitive with Dueñas'
services) Rodriguez opportunity. This happens at the tactical
level, too. In Lou Piniella's last couple of years managing the
Seattle Mariners, he appeared to do this a lot late in games.
He'd focus on the bullpen and ignore his team at the plate, not
making obvious moves he normally knew needed to be made, like
leaving in a hitter with virtually no on-base percentage when he
had a decent potential pinch-hitter on the bench. Or, if he made
the lineup move late in a game, he wouldn't make bullpen moves,
leaving in a guy who was getting shelled long after the manager should
have stuck a fork in him. It was as though he only had enough
attention to give to half the game at a time.

Do you know any managers who do that? Has your organization
ever suffered as a result? What do you do to try and
"fix" them?

In your organization, is there a Dueñas hidden in plain
sight? A perfectly wonderful contributor who isn't noticed
because another is better or has better star quality presence? If you work in a big organization, I'd bet All-Star game tickets on it.

1/25/2004 06:38:00 AM posted by j @ 1/25/2004 06:38:00 AM

Friday, January 23, 2004

I Can't See, For Maels: When Managers Can't Process Two Things At Once

About half
this text appeared in posts I made at Baseball Primer. If you
read
those already, I wanted to prepare you so you could scan though
that quickly.

Back in in late October, a couple of high-level Cuban
ballplayers defected, 24-year old Sancti Spíritus starter Maels
Rodriguez and 31-year old second baseman Yobal Dueñas, with the
intent of playing in the majors. Because the system has some
built-in edges for teams that sign Cuban defectors, front offices
have been eyeing the merchandise.

But in a wierd way that's an lesson in limited thinking that's
illustrative for decisionmakers beyond baseball.

Rodriguez, a 24-year-old
righthander, would be the best big league prospect to defect
from Cuba were it not for recent rumors of back and arm
injuries. Rodriguez, whose fastball regularly reached 100 mph
in the past, set the single-season strikeout record in Cuba,
fanning 263 batters in 178 innings three years ago. In the
2001-02 season, he struck out 219 in 148-1/3 innings, going
14-3, 2.13 ERA. [snip]

Rodriguez, listed at
5-foot-11, 176 pounds during the 2000 Olympics, has had a
strong international career as well, striking out 22 in 13
scoreless innings during the Olympics. One pro scout in
Sydney rated Rodriguez' fastball an 8 on the scouting 2-to-8
scale, "because you can't go higher". [snip]

Dueñas, a 6-foot-2,
187-pound second baseman from Pinar del Rio, is a five-tool
player and former Cuban stolen base champ who, at 31, is on
the down side of a career that saw him debut in the Cuban
national league at 17.

UPSIDE/RISKS

So there are two all-stars who played in the same league. Two
possibilities, a young starting pitcher with an excellent record
against inconsistent opposition, and a slightly-past-his peak
slugging second baseman with baserunning speed. In an
"efficient market" a group of teams would be pursuing
each, with a few more probably pursuing Rodriguez because his
upside is higher, meaning he should command more money, but a
fair number pursuing Dueñas, because this type is fairly rare.
But it appears according to this more recent USA Today article
that, essentially, Rodriguez is lighting up a ton of interest,
Dueñas is chopped liver. Let's do a quick overview of values and
risks for each. I have more data on Dueñas' career, so that'll
be a little more detailed.

Rodriguez: Young, at 24, so lots of career
left if he can pitch at major league level. Extraordinary numbers
(strikeouts per 9 innings rate at remarkable levels, earned over
many innings, "measured" at 100 m.p.h., pro scout rates
his most important pitch at or beyond the top of the scale). But
two injuries, to back and to pitching arm, after which he lost 15
m.p.h. off his fastball (close to fatal if he can't get it back).
Cuban league pitchers of his peak accomplishment have succeeded
in the majors, been ordinary, and been useless. High potential
reward, high risk, and because of high interest, high cost.

Dueñas: At 31, a year or three past his
prime. Players of his skill-set (Roberto
Alomar, Toby
Harrah) tend to shear off around age 33, sometimes later, so
one to three years of high-level use if he can play at a major
league level.

In the most recent championship season in Cuban baseball,
Dueñas played for Pinar Del Rio, the team that finished with the
best record in the league (64-26, .711). Dueñas led his team in
BA (.348, missed BA champion's .408 by a wide mark, and was 16th
in the league this stat), though on the positive side, his team
led the league in BA, so being the leading BA person on a team
that overall leads is a little accomplishment. League BA was
.293.

League SLG was .426,
Dueñas' was .551
League ISO was .133, Dueñas' was .203
League OBA was .356, Dueñas' was .386
League AB/(2b+3b) was 18, Dueñas' was 13
League AB/HR was 44, Dueñas' was 26

ISO is isolated power, a generalized stat for measuring
extra-base hit ability that by putting together doubles, triples
and homers, measures an overall "power" type hitter.

Far more doubles, homers, batting average than league average batters. Doesn't walk or strike
out a lot. His defense is questionable.

Cuban teams are regional and are not allowed to make trades to
balance an excess at one position against a void in another, so
some people, to avoid being stuck forever behind
someone, end up moving to a position they're not so good at. I
saw Dueñas play a single game in which he looked average, but
his reputation among the Pinar fans we heard from is that he's
not better-than-average with the leather.

Here's the most interesting thing about him to a
decisionmaker, though. While many high level Cuban pitchers have
tried to make the majors, Dueñas is the most accomplished Cuban
hitter to have a chance to play in the majors since the anti-Cuba
embargo started. His offensive abilities are diverse, severely
lacking only in walks, but better than average in contact, BA,
extra base hits, and dingers. Presuming he's not emotionally
wasted by his recent life experiences, Dueñas should be an
interesting data point to judge the potential quality of the
better Cuban hitters to compete as individuals in the majors.

The upside is a few years of that valuable-because-too-rare
commodity, a power-speed hitting middle infielder. The downside
is probably he can be very competitive in AAA but not in the
majors.

According to the USA Today article, he's a lightly regarded
utility player.

Strange he's so lightly-regarded. Clearly past his prime
years, but to this age the second baseman has had the equivalent
of Toby Harrah's bat and glove in a somewhat competitive league.
This last season he played for the championship team, and was
their leading hitter in several rate categories.

Since his value lies in a combo of isolated power plus batting
average, not the attributes that tend to vaporize first, and
because sometimes players find an uptick in power after
age 30, I think some team that needs offensive pop at 2nd base
and can afford a sub-par fielder should take a look at him. Todd
Walker has a job at the same age with an apparently weaker bat
and the same kind of leather.

Rodriguez could be another Mark Prior. Dueñas could
be the good-not-great Roberto Alomar for a couple of years or
maybe more.

WHY?

Why total interest in Rodriguez, none of note in Dueñas?

The answer is a management decisionmaking lesson, and I'll explain
in my next entry.

1/23/2004 08:25:00 AM posted by j @ 1/23/2004 08:25:00 AM

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Dick Williams' Lesson inEstablishing a Reputation

When you start a management position in a new company or in a
group that doesnt know you well, there will be many
staffers who dont want it to be too easy for you. One or
two of them might have been angling for your job themselves.

There are many males who compete by a zero-sum equation; like
frat boys hazing rituals, they believe you have to earn
their compliance. There are many females who manage their
environment by manipulation, testing your resolve and
determination.

Youre going to have to learn to establish a reputation
that has a full spectrum of possibilities, because different
people are best managed with different incentives and approaches.
If youre a natural hard-ass, youre going to need to
learn to establish a reputation as a cooperator. If youre a
nice guy, youll need to show your assertiveness. And once
established, youll need to reinforce your reputation with
consistent marketing, that is, presenting yourself a
certain way, but you equally may need to alter your reputation in
response to group needs or events.

Dick Williams was hired by Charlie O. Finley to take the
Oakland As to a new level. The team had built a roster very
wisely in the late 1960s and had two second place finishes in a
row, In 1969 and 1970 with aloof, businesslike managers Hank
Bauer and John McNamara. Finley understood that a different style
can frequently bring out new strengths while holding on to
strengths already internalized.

Williams was more a one-of-the-guys manager, but when he got
to the As, they were already swaggering, feeling like
champs, and, according to Williams, he had three clubhouse
leaders. There was Reggie Jackson, the vocal one, Sal Bando, the
quiet clubhouse emissary, and Catfish Hunter, the ace pitcher and
campus clown who kept everyone loose. As Williams said in his
book No More Mr. Nice Guy:

Ill let players lead
themselves, particularly veterans like Catfish, as long as
they recognize and respect the ultimate authority. Me.

 We had opened that first
As season by losing four of our first six games I
was a little worried about a pitching staff that had allowed
40 runs in those games. Then I became more worried after
Charlie called me and pitching coach Bill Posedel to his
apartment and asked what the hell I was going to do about it
.

By the time the plane landed
in Milwaukee to begin the trip, I had advanced from worried
to angry.

His players were loose, but in a bad, unproductive way, and
not listening to their manager. Williams knew he needed to change
the established shape of the manager-player relationship in a way
that asserted his dominance, but not in some hysterical Captain
Queeg out-of-context rant. Fate handed him an opportunity right
that minute in Milwaukee.

The players got off the plane an boarded their bus. A flight
attendant from the plane came running out to the bus, jumped on
it and explained that someone had stolen a megaphone from the
plane at they had to return it. I sucked in my breath,
Williams said, It was time to stop staring in awe at my
Athletics and start shoving them.

He stood up in the aisle and announced he was going to stand
there until they coughed up megaphone. Silence, jostling and
nudging, snickers. He turned red.

I dont know if you guys know this, but we arent
exactly burning up the damn league. More silence, more
snickers.

I know some of you think you can be assholes well I
can be the biggest asshole of them all. And if you have a problem
with that, just call Charlie but he aint her now and I
am, and youd better learn to live with-

Clunk. The megaphone had been returned.

It turned out it was ace pitcher Catfish Hunter whod
stolen the megaphone. I knew and the team knew but I never
did anything about it. As it turned out, I should have given him
a bonus for feeding me the slow curve that enabled this team to
feel my swing.

I was never told how they reacted to it, but then I didnt
need to be told, I saw. We won 12 of our next 13 games. Six days
after my meltdown we went into first place and were never caught.

BEYOND BASEBALL

Beyond baseball sometimes (rarely) a tantrum is just whats
needed for a relatively-new manager to cement his authority.
Usually its something else. But you have to wait for the
right opportunity, because if its too out of context or
feels staged, it will actually degrade your authority.

My wife works in an organization that has an affirmative
action program for hiring older people who had been career
military. A few men who came in this way got into positions of
hiring power and started hiring a lot more retired military men
until the organization had a strong strain of this particular
style of management. It's a style that doesn't work well in most
non-military settings.

The ones that succeeded in the new role were the ones who
established early on that their management style was different.
They did this by demonstrating an almost over-the-top "warm
fuzziness", very explicitly differentiating themselves from
the expected pattern. The ones who failed to set a tone early
were likely to waste time struggling against the reputation of
the retired military archetype.

Set a tone, establish who you are early & clearly. Maybe
you'll be a legendary success like Dick Williams.

1/20/2004 08:00:00 AM posted by j @ 1/20/2004 08:00:00 AM

Saturday, January 17, 2004

The Rocket's Red Flame-OutEnvironment As Friend & Foe

When Roger
Clemens came out of a retirement the length of some pop
singer's recent marriage to sign with the Houston Astros, he did
it, apparently, for the environment.

The environment should be beneficial to extending the career
of an aging player. The deal was set up so the Texan wouldn't
have to travel as much as a normal player, not going on road
series where he would not be starting. This would give him a
small, partial step into retirement that would afford him a
physically easier summer (the man is a work-out demon, but he is
getting to that age where slowing down is something that tends to
happen to you, not something you choose). And the Astros have
stated he wouldn't pitch every fifth start, but get a little
easier schedule.

He would get to stay home with his family, enjoy his
well-earned money, and the team is counting on his noteworthy
work ethic and competitiveness to keep him sharp enough in this
part-time role. Both the team's vision and Clemens' vision are
clever. It could work. But it's an experiment with a lot of
unknowns, and a handful of knowns that can work against its
success. In all cases, the environment, which played a part in
Clemens' decision to unretire, is also a factor that could hammer
him into mediocrity.

HALF-RETIREMENT

The first unknowable factor is this half-retirement lifestyle.
Most managers don't have the privilege of half-retirement, but
executives frequently do in public companies and family-owned
for-profits. The drive that makes an executive seem successful to
the outside world, a relentless quest for more,
mirrors the major league player's intensity for better.
People who get to these rarified positions almost always have
that relentless, focused desire for that one thing they pursue.
The ones that don't have this imblanaced perception fo the world
rarey acheive, in observers' eyes, at the same level. Readers of
Michael Lewis' Moneyball know Oakland GM Billy Beane
was, as a player, considered to have all the necessary tools to
play at a very high level. And he did play in the majors. While
that is a very high level, a remarkable achievement (yes it's
remarkable...about 1 in 100,000 people, the top .001 percentile,
who aspires to play major league baseball ever do), he would not
be said to have had a successful baseball career. Because, in the
end, he didn't have the ability to ignore everything else in his
life. The same happens beyond baseball. The half-retired exec
makes mistakes he wouldn't make if he worked full time.
Emotionally, it can be difficult watching others make decisions
he wouldn't and not interfere. He's not marinating in the
day-to-day minutaie that color decisionmaking.

Clemens could be (unknowable, but the pattern is there) in the
same situation. He's been doing this intense job for 20 years in
the majors, building up regular routines and regimens. Maybe he
doesn't have the Mike Hargrove before every pitch rituals, but
he's got it down from his food to his exercise and stretching to
his pre-game scouting. And the routine of being with the guys and
horsing around and the ballplayer-on-the-road socializing, which
is every bit as much habitual as the game preparation part. These
human factors are now-ingrained habits as well.

And the very intensity of purpose, hyperfocus, that allows a
player or exec to get to that level, can disable his ability to
refocus or kick back in a half-retirement.

And what if he does relax a little, and redistribute
his focus? Will a 41 year old guy whose very fuel is intensity be
able to pull a Tom Seaver and use his intellectual capacity to
find a zen-like balance point? I don't know Clemens personally,
but nothing I've seen or read him saying leads me to believe his
intellect is a major talent in his quiver.

Either way, the environment of half-retirement, while looking
good on the physical side, is an unknowable factor that can
affect the outcome of this experiment in many ways, mostly to the
detriment of his pitching performance.

ENRON FIELD

Houston's home park, Enron Field, is not a typical
environment, and this will play a more important role in Clemens'
performance than it would for an average Astro hurler, because
they're going to use him more at home than on the road (if they
stick with the plan). It promotes offense for both right-handed
and, especially, left-handed hitters. [snip here -- there was a false assertion here I made because I mis-read my print outs. I was corrected by "Jeff" on Baseball Primer; Thanks Jeff].

Clemens' home-road splits were really pronounced last year,
too. (ERA = 5.22 at Yankee, 2.53 away; his three-year ERA splits
were not very different, so perhaps that was just an artifact of
a relatively small sample). But if his age 40 season indicated
some actual changes/evolution in his pitching, that could bode
very poorly for him, too, because Yankee Stadium, like Enron,
rewards left-handed home run hitting, and that pushes a pitcher
to modify in some cases his pitch selection. I'm suggesting he
might find himself making the same adjustments to his choices
that lead to his relatively poorer performance in Yankee Stadium
last year.

NATIONAL LEAGUE: VICTIMIZE AT YOUR OWN
RISK

In the American League environment he's always played in,
Clemens doesn't have to hit. Meaning if he intimidates batters by
throwing inside or plunking them or just glaring at them, he's
unlikely to be the recipient of physiocal-style revenge. In the
National, as a batter, he isn't protected. I'm not convinced this
will be a major factor, but many observers do. Jayson
Stark for example suggests:

Roger Clemens may
have sounded good when he joked about how the
Astros didn't sign him to hit .360. But if he
doesn't think he's heading for a different world
in the National League, he's got a major jolt
coming.

Health
will be one issue. One long-time Clemens watcher
predicts he will pull a quad muscle
running down to first base some night. But the
bigger question will be how Clemens'
high-and-tight style will play out in a league
where he has to bring his bat to the plate 60 to
70 times a year.

"He's
already issued a challenge by saying it's not
going to change his style," says one NL
scout. "And I know that's part of his
greatness. But he'd better expect some
consequences. When guys with his control pitch
that way, everybody knows it's intentional. I can
see him getting knocked on his butt. And him
being the competitor he is, I don't know what the
reaction will be. It'll be fun to watch. I know
that."

Environmentally, Clemens is pushed into a position where he's
at marginally-greater physical risk, and he'll need to adjust his
mental and emotional settings accordingly. Another environmental
challenge with unknowable results.

This is not doom and gloom. Many execs retire from, for
example, a hard-hitting business career and make the transtition
to a part-time position in a non-profit organization. But most
fail.

Is this a new beginning for Clemens, or the Rocket's Red Flame
out?

1/17/2004 09:11:00 AM posted by j @ 1/17/2004 09:11:00 AM

Thursday, January 15, 2004

Angels in the Infield: Dakotan Flambeau

The California Angels this weekend signed the marquee
free agent of the year, outfielder Vladimir Guerrero, a fine
pickup. But they already had four should-be front line
outfielders in Garret Anderson, Darin Erstad, Jose Guillen and
Tim Salmon, as well as contributing back-up Jeff DaVanon. The
opportunity for the team's fairly new owner to make a big splash
with the acquisition of an exciting and fine player was just too
succulent for the organization to pass up.

To make this work, they've planned on making the steady but
slow Salmon their designated hitter, leaving only one outfielder
too many, and still no real first baseman. Most non-baseball
organizations facing this kind of situation (more skilled people
than they need in one position, none in another they also needed)
might think of moving the least-effective person in the glut
position over to the empty position, or laying off one of their
glut position people and hiring someone for the empty one.

The Angels aren't doing that.

They're taking Darin
Erstad, their most
effective outfielder and moving him to first base. Erstad of
the many spectacular highlight-reel diving catches and
take-no-prisoners crashing around to come up the the ball at all
costs. Erstad's not just the Angels' best jardinero, and
their only real center-fielder (outfielder with enough range and
assertiveness and judgement to cover the corner outfielders) he's
arguably one of the best outfield gloves in the entire American
League. And he's barely a league average hitter over his career.
And first base is usually a position where you try to squeeze in
the best available hitter because if he's barely adequate with
the glove & not particularly mobile, that's the place on the
field a non-fielder will hurt you least.

Erstad had one very good offensive season in his career, 2000,
and since then has been pretty sorry with the bat, 10% to 25%
below average in offensive value. He's stayed in the lineup
because the Angels paid him a lot of money in a multi-year
contract, and because he really is a great outfielder.

EQUAL & OPPOSITE REACTION

It's not surprising that there's been a firestorm of reaction.
The Angels' rationale is based on a chain of logic. Erstad missed over the half the season last year because of injuries.
Before that, he played through injuries. Those injuries sapped
his offensive numbers. If he wasn't playing outfield, he wouldn't
be splattering himself against walls and the ground so often,
making him less likely to be injured making him offensively more
effective.

Here's the essence of what one informed commentator, Rob
Neyer, had to say on the plan:

5.
Uh, right. This argument -- that Erstad will suddenly become
a good hitter because he's not playing center field any more
-- strikes me as fairly ridiculous. It's certainly possible,
but we're talking about a player who's been a good hitter in
exactly one season out of the last four. Does he really have
a 776 career OPS because he's been all beat up from playing
center field? Or does he have a 776 career OPS because that's
how good he really is?

Taking
this further, I think we might reasonably argue that the
Angels are worse off if Erstad is healthy. As Joe Sheehan
observed in his column on Tuesday, if Erstad's playing first
base he really doesn't have any value at all, because most of
his value rests in his brilliant defense in center field.
Take him out of center field but keep him in the lineup, and
all of sudden you're spending $8 million per season on a
whole lot of nothin'.

Basically, I agree. The chain of logic seems to be based on
MBWT (Management By Wishful Thinking), and the benefits to
Erstad's offense not very likely to come about. And no matter if
they do, the Angels have removed the single outfielder who glues
the other guys together and replaced him with someone below
average with the leather at a key position. All true...

BUT

But while it's unlikely the shift might help Erstad's offense
blossom, it's not impossible. And the Angels are not
likely to be able to trade Erstad's batch of skills without
shelling out a lot of money to go along with it because his value
is so specialised and his $8 million contract so high in the
market of this minute. And if Erstad doesn't come around
offensively at some point, his value really will tank even more
sharply, as his now-30 year old body ages, isn't likely to retain
its extraordinary skill at the fielding part of the game.

It's an amazing piece of risk-taking, more likely to
fail than succeed, but it might succeed, and if Erstad
comes back offensively (again, possible though not probable),
they get the value of his offense along with that of the other
outfielders and his trade value goes up so they might actually be
able to deal him, even with that contract. Many observers think,
based on past history, that this year's
depressed-relative-to-recent contract prices will spring back,
making a one-year solution to Erstad's value/price asymmetry
something the team might be able to live with..

BEYOND BASEBALL

This is a lovely illustration of the kind of moment it could
well be worth taking a big risk in your own management
environment. Let's go over the condition for this kind of
lower-probability decision: It's a situation with no obvious fix
at hand, so it calls for an experiment.

I had a client, a specialty
architectural consultant, that had good sales and earnings
terrible cash-flow problems. The kinds of bids they made cost
them a lot to make, and they were generally conservative, not
choosing to bid on smaller jobs that weren't very likely to win.
But after struggling with cash flow asphyxia for a couple of
hard-working years, they just decided to start bidding on
everything. They took a couple of their most competent
high-billing consultants off billable hours and moved them to
business development to come up with a lot of proposal responses
and while they were doing that, develop a model to make the bid
processes cheaper by cutting corners. Because they weren't real
business development people, they weren't attached to the old
model, and because they normally worked in the field, they had a
pretty good understanding of what things on proposal responses
were just pro forma and not likely to be part of jobs and thus,
sometimes less-examined in repsonses.

I thought they wouldn't succeed in the
effort, but I helped them build some systems for reusing content
and collecting knowledge about competitors and customers that
would help in the bid process. They did the opposite of one of my
general rules, which is to get people who are good at what they
do to spend more of their time doing that high-output work while
trimming their efforts at what they don't do well. And I was
surprised, but they were successful doing it just this way, going
against the probabilities.

This kind of experiment can be worth a
try, but don't bet the farm on it on it. When you do this in your
own organization, have a contingency plan or three in place
before you fully commit to a risky experiment like this. Pick a
stop-loss point, a clear, measurable set of conditions and
deadlines that if you're not making sufficient progress, you pull
the plug and move to the fallback, less risky, position. Be
cold-blooded, not emotional (neither exuberant nor
nervous-nelly), about monitoring progress.

With Erstad, where he's
moving from is something he does really well. The Angels are moving him
to where they need something he doesn't normally give. It's risky, but it
might just "work". And let's hope they know what we do;
if they're at game 50 and have a prayer at winning the division,
and Erstad's producing a 775 OPS as a first baseman, they'll move on to their
fall-back plan and put Erstad back where he should produce what
he can produce for his team.

1/15/2004 06:20:00 AM posted by j @ 1/15/2004 06:20:00 AM

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

Part II: The Reputation is Not the Guy Pettitte & Astro-logy

In the last entry I briefly discussed Andy Pettitte's
reputation as a big game pitcher and Thomas Ayers' analysis of
the lefty's playoff and World Series performances. There's a good
management lesson in using analysis to look past reputation
because, as I stated:

In measuring performance, lazy management
will frequently let a story with truth behind it or just good
personal marketing overshadow the reality. Sometimes, the
reputation was earned hundreds of events ago, with no
comparable success since. Outside of baseball, this is very
destructive. Unlike a lot of the bad metrics and bad
interpretation of metrics and poor application of metrics
discussions on this weblog over the last few months, this is
the polar opposite: not allowing actual facts get in the way
of good folklore.

Because a fair number of the letters that come in from this
weblog are asking about how to develop metrics and
analyze the data, I've already suggested you look at Ayers'
analysis (I don't agree with all of it, but he's laid it out
in a way that gives you a panoramic view of his very rational
process and logic), and I'll show you the way I would look at his
data to try and discern Pettitte's post-season performance for
myself. I hope for those who have asked for how-to details,
you'll be able to get an idea of both his pattern in this case
and mine. It's less a technical manual (One, do this. Two, do
that) than patterns you can try out. If you're no good at
patterns and need a technical manual, you're going to probably
struggle with practical metrics, though that doesn't mean you
shouldn't try. People who don't have a "knack" for it
can combine their efforts with someone else who does and add a
lot to the mix.

THE OCTOBER PETTITTE

Is Andy
Pettitte a good Playoff/World Series (PWS) starting pitcher?
If you looked at Ayers' data, you can see roll-ups that indicate
his consolidated output/statistics are essentially no
different PWS than in the regular season. Since he's pitching
against a subset of teams that qualified for PWS, and since few
teams that make it to PWS have below-average offenses, I suggest
the average opponent Pettitte faced in PWS was better than the
average opponent he faced in the regular season. This is somewhat
negated by the fact that the Yankees spend more on opponent
scouting than any other team, so Pettitte and his catchers have
been armed with great business intelligence, better than they
would have had available during the regular season.

The conclusion that Pettitte is a better PWS pitcher
than regular season pitcher is hard to reach. He's started 30
games and thrown 187 innings (just about a season's worth of
starts) in the nine years he's pitched for Gotham in the PWS, so
sample size is on the bubble, neither nailed nor silly to talk
about.

HIS TEAM WHEN HE DIDN'T PITCH

His won-loss record in those 30 games is 16-5. Very cool. I'd
like that. But what did his team do in gamkes he wasn't pitching
in? The Yankees were 70-34 total in the PWS series in which
Pettitte pitched. So we'll contrast games-he-got-a-decision-in
against the rest of the Yankee games. Subtract 16-5 from the
total 70-34, and the Yanks were 54-29 in games Pettitte didn't
get a decision in. The Yanks performed at a very high level
whether he was starting or not, but they performed better in
games he started. Beyond baseball, this is a good way to start
isolating individual performance: ask the question, "do we
do better when X is in the project/group/task/effort than when
she's not?".

How about the games Pettitte started and didn't get a decision
in? What did the Yankees do in those? Back to the table.

Year

Score

Series

G

IP

H

ER

HR

BB

K

Andy

NY

OPP

2000

55

WS

5

7

8

2

0

3

5

ND

W

NYM

2000

49

WS

1

6.2

8

3

0

1

4

ND

W

NYM

1996

45

CS

1

7

7

4

2

4

4

ND

W

BAL

1996

44

DS

2

6.1

4

4

2

6

3

ND

W

TEX

2003

36

CS

6

5

8

4

1

2

5

ND

L

BOS

2000

23

DS

5

3.2

10

5

0

2

4

ND

W

OAK

1999

21

WS

3

3.2

10

5

0

1

1

ND

W

ATL

I sorted the table by whether Pettitte Won or lost or had no
decision, so we can isolate those games. First question:: Did the
Yanks win or lose. Based on the kind of performance he put up in
the No Decision (ND) games. The Yanks were 6-1 in games Pettitte
started and got no decision in. Intuitively, this suggests he
pitched decently enough (in the games he got no decision) to
allow his team to win.

HIS TEAM WHEN HE DIDN'T GET THE DECISION

Let's take one more look at those games, because teams don't
score the same number of runs every day. Sometimes they create an
easy environment for a pitcher (even one having an off day)
because they put up 11 runs, and sometimes they're as listless as
a Faulkner character on a muggy summer day in Mississippi. Just
as in your organization, many times a team's performance will
cover up or hide an individual's performance.

I sorted these games by Ayers' Modified Game Score number (50
is average, higher is better). With Bill James' Game Scores (the
metric Ayers modifed) I sometimes use my own thumbnail quickie
standard: A score above 54 should be a win, below 46 should be a
loss, and anything in-between is a toss-up. For the moment, I'm
going to pretend Ayers' Modified Game Scores work the same way as
James' (if I was doing this for a client, I'd run James' numbers,
which I have a feel for, and use those rather than trust what I
haven't mastered). The game scores in the no decision games are:
55, 49, 45, 44, 36, 23, 21. One "should have won", 1
toss-up, four "should have lost".

So those seven games in which Pettitte got no decision, and in
which the Yankees went 6-1, were games Petittte generally didn't
pitch well. They (offiense, relief pitching) saved his bacon by
winning games he probably "shouldn't" have.

His set of performances here was masked to some degree by
context, by what the rest of the team did. This figure, in
part, tunes the 16-5 win-loss. If we chose to, we could add
the 1-4 "should haves" to Pettitte's 16-5, which would
give us 17-9, still awfully good. Now let's re-apply the
games-in-which-he-didn't-start thumbnail: Subtract 17-9 from the
total 70-34, and the Yanks were 53-25 in the non-Pettitte games.
The Yanks essentially were as likely to win in games Pettitte
didn't start as the ones he did.

This doesn't mean Pettitte is not a very fine pitcher in PWS
(you have to be to beat the higher concentration of good
opposition). It just means it appears to me Andy Pettitte is not
significantly better than the other Yankee picthers in the
measure of PWS performer.

The Reputation is Not the Guy.

In the next entry, I'll discuss reputation using Pettitte's
example, and try to point out why he has the reputation
as opposed to anyone else on the Yanks.

1/13/2004 07:43:00 AM posted by j @ 1/13/2004 07:43:00 AM

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Non-Metrics. Houston Astro-logy: The Reputation is Not the Guy

When the Houston Astros signed free-agent starting pitcher
Andy Pettitte recently, a lot of the fan talk about it revolved
around his reputation as a big-game pitcher. Yankee fans bemoaned
his shabby treatment and most who talked about it expressed the
feeling that the Yanks would suffer from the loss of his monster
playoff and World Series performances. Astro fans expressed the
feeling that his playoff clutchness would rub off on the younger
pitchers, adding even more mojo than his individual performances.
But...

THE REPUTATION IS NOT THE GUY -- LEN
BARKER

In measuring performance, lazy management will frequently let
a story with truth behind it or just good personal marketing
overshadow the reality. Sometimes, the reputation was earned
hundreds of events ago, with no comparable success since. Outside
of baseball, this is very destructive. Unlike a lot of the bad
metrics and bad interpretation of metrics and poor application of
metrics discussions on this weblog over the last few months, this
is the polar opposite: not allowing actual facts get in the way
of good folklore. This Post-Modern Alfred E. Neuman approach I
call "What, Me Measure?".

Here's a perfect baseball example; because the player's career
is over, it, and his reputation is frozen, like a fly in amber.
Many people old enough to remember the perfect game Len
Barker, the Cleveland Indian workhorse, threw in 1981 against
the Blue Jays, have a hard time remembering his career
lingered on for another six years during which he was 40-51 with
an ERA (a thin measure by itself, but somewhat indicative) 8%
worse than the leagues-average performance for pitchers.

His reputation: workhorse (a guy who can be counted
on to pitch a lot of innings of adequate or better performance)
and a perfect game. In the rest of his career, he had
one workhorse year, 1982, and he never again threw a no-hitter or
one-hitter or two-hitter; he did have a handful of three-hitters
and some perfectly fine performances, but basically he was a
C-minus starting pitcher without a lot of durability. Len Barker
and his reputation bore little resemblance to each other for the
rest of his career. Broadcasters, fans, even some front office
guys never let that stand in the way of their impressions.

A CURRENT EXAMPLE WITH DEEPER RESEARCH

Andy Pettitte's career reputation is more fluid because he's
still playing. Right now, his reputation as the playoff clutch
performer hold the field, but he probably has several years left,
so there's time for more folklore and fact. His reputation will
be changed as a not-Yankee, especially since he's moved to a
different league. In moving to Houston, he'll be playing in Enron
Field, a place that boosts offense some, though it slightly
favored left-handed pitchers (like Pettitte) last year. Also, the
Houston club is a pretty good team, while the Yankees have
consistently been better than that (about 12 wins a year better
over the last three years). A lot of things can happen.

But Thomas Ayers of the Ballpark Analysis site has compiled
complete data on Pettitte's playoff and World Series pitching
performances to help us judge whether the Louisianan's reputation
is deserved, exaggerated or off-the-wall. The piece, Practically
Awesome or Awesomely Practical, goes through a whole set
of statistical comparisons between Pettitte's regular season and
his post-season ones. The general indication is that his actual
performance taken as a composite whole (remember my earlier
warning about the average not being the guy) is very similar
between the two.

Ayers' did very thorough tabulation and made interesting
comments, but he didn't summarize with a package of stated
conclusions. I think I can safely suggest heis belief at the end
of his analysis is that Pettitte is no better in playoffs and
World Series games than he is during the regular season, and
perhaps his performances are slightly less good in the most
crucial games. While his thinking approach is interesting, I
don't exactly agree with some of his methods. He altered Bill
James' Game Score, which is a TOGN (The One Great Number) that is
useful if not cosmic. And he used his own judgement to decide
which of the post-season games Pettitte pitched in were Most and
Least Crucial. I don't take issue with his choices, only that any
game is "more" or "less" crucial in a seven-
or five game series.

Ayers ran multiple tables to contrast Pettitte's performance.
So I can use Ayers' tables to posit simpler, broader conclusions.
Here's his biggest table, listing every Pettitte career playoff
or World Series start (I trimmed a few columns to simplify it,
then resorted it based on whether Pettitte got a Win, had no
decision, or a Loss).

Year

Score

Series

G

IP

H

ER

HR

BB

K

Andy

NY

OPP

2001

78

CS

1

8

3

1

0

1

7

W

W

SEA

2003

78

WS

2

8.2

6

0

0

1

7

W

W

FLO

1998

75

DS

2

7

3

1

0

0

8

W

W

TEX

1996

74

WS

5

8.1

5

0

0

3

4

W

W

ATL

2000

71

DS

2

7.2

5

0

0

1

3

W

W

OAK

2003

70

DS

2

7

4

1

1

3

10

W

W

MIN

1998

69

WS

4

7.1

5

0

0

3

4

W

W

SD

1996

66

CS

5

8

3

2

2

1

3

W

W

BAL

1999

63

DS

2

7.1

7

1

1

0

5

W

W

TEX

1999

58

CS

4

7.1

8

2

0

1

5

W

W

BOS

2000

49

CS

3

6.2

9

2

0

1

2

W

W

SEA

2003

49

CS

2

6.2

9

2

1

2

5

W

W

BOS

2001

45

CS

5

6.1

8

3

0

1

1

W

W

SEA

2000

55

WS

5

7

8

2

0

3

5

ND

W

NYM

2000

49

WS

1

6.2

8

3

0

1

4

ND

W

NYM

1996

45

CS

1

7

7

4

2

4

4

ND

W

BAL

1996

44

DS

2

6.1

4

4

2

6

3

ND

W

TEX

2003

36

CS

6

5

8

4

1

2

5

ND

L

BOS

2000

23

DS

5

3.2

10

5

0

2

4

ND

W

OAK

1999

21

WS

3

3.2

10

5

0

1

1

ND

W

ATL

2003

65

WS

6

7

6

1

0

3

7

L

L

FLO

2001

57

WS

2

7

5

4

1

0

8

L

L

ARI

2001

55

DS

2

6.1

7

1

1

2

4

L

L

OAK

1997

48

DS

5

6.2

6

4

0

0

2

L

L

CLE

2002

28

DS

2

3

8

4

0

0

1

L

L

ANA

1997

21

DS

2

5

9

7

1

1

3

L

L

CLE

2001

17

WS

6

2

7

6

0

2

1

L

L

ARI

1996

15

WS

1

2.1

6

7

1

1

1

L

L

ATL

1998

14

CS

3

4.2

8

6

4

3

1

L

L

CLE

In my next entry, I'll walk through some of my conclusions and
my thinking in getting there.

But no matter what conclusions Ayers comes to, or I come to,
it will be a more informed set of conclusions that anyone can get
by simply rejecting the data and waving around the guy's
reputation. As a manager, it's important you not allow yourself
to be fooled by legends, sagas, or other folkloric performance
data that corrode organizational vitality as surely as the
intentional lies of the annual litany of Soviet
"record-breaking yields" and the just plain lazy
parroting of things one hasn't bothered to examine or analyze.

Let's hope for the Astros' sake, they signed Pettitte for what
they actually knew about him beyond his regional connection and
his reputation, and that it wasn't just Astro-logy.